Review - The Parting of the Ways

Season 1 comes to a dramatic conclusion, as does Christopher Eccleston's all too short tenure as The Doctor in The Parting of the Ways.

Season 1, Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways

We pick up this story with The Doctor and Captain Jack flying off to rescue Rose from the recently revealed Dalek armada. Here I get a little confused as to why all of the sudden the TARDIS is apparently defenseless. I thought it always had some kind of shielding, but I could be somewhat confused. After bodging up a shield using the Extrapolator we get treated to a nice long conversation with the Emperor Dalek, wherein we learn it has a God Complex and it loonier than usual.

After The Doctor, Jack and Rose escape, there was an awkward bit of sexual tension back on the Game Station between The Doctor and Lynda. I thought they were hinting at that in Bad Wolf, but wasn't sure until the weird, kiss-no-hug-no-shake moment. Very strange, and possibly one of the few Hunka hunka burning Doc moments with Nine.

As the Doctor begins enacting his plan to foil the Daleks (not really using the Sonic Screwdriver much if at all), he forcibly evacuates Rose back home using Emergency Program 1. Rose then has a significant culture shock freak-out. Her speech about how The Doctor teaches you to lead a good life was inspired, and very well delivered. It really dug its claws into me for some reason. Maybe because I sort of feel that way about The Doctor myself in a way.

The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know, he showed you too. That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say, "No." You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away...

I loved the classic flying saucer design of the Dalek ships, and the flood of Daleks pouring out of them was a fantastic sight. We also saw our first specialist Dalek of New Who in the form of a blowtorch wielding one. We also got to hear some classic Dalek lines:

"I cannot see! My vision is impaired!"

Then the big companion tease with Lynda is ended with a silent, "Ex-ter-mi-nate!" You can't hear the Dalek say it, but you know what each flash of those lights means. Little details like that are always appreciated here. When Jack's time came, he copped it sweet, and it would have been a perfect ending for him if things went differently.

Captain Jack Harkness. Dying, like a BOSS!!!

There's a lot of ethical agonising over killing all life on Earth to destroy the Daleks, and you could see the conflict in Eccleston's face as that scene played out. The Doctor chooses not to be that man again and to face the consequences of that decision. Rose channeling the Time Vortex gives a handy out to that problem, and if she'd showed up a couple of minutes earlier, we could have been in for a repeat of the end of Boom Town. I was glad the Doctor made his choice before Rose's return.

I can't work out if I liked Time Vortex Rose or not. Was she nailing the performance, or failing badly? In the end I just went with it. I'm confused as to why absorbing the power of the Time Vortex was fatal to The Doctor, but not to Rose. She had the power for much longer and suffered no ill effects beyond passing out. I suppose this is likely a symptom of Eccleston suddenly leaving the program though. And quite why The Doctor had to kiss the Time Vortex out of her, I can't begin to imagine.

The Doctor prescribes 200 CCs of Lurve.

So, all told this was a solid episode, and a great way of ending the season despite the quite literal Deus Ex Machina ending. It was also a reasonable send-off for Eccleston, who, as I've said before, was woefully under-rated as The Doctor. If we'd have had another season or two with him, I think more people would appreciate Nine.

9/10

Can we fix it?

Not really, no. I know I haven't given this one a straight 10, but I can't really pick where it could be improved. Perhaps the way it ended makes it feel a bit rushed. Rose is able to deal with the Dalek threat in a literal instant, making The Doctor's 20 minute struggle to get the Delta Wave generated seem a bit of a waste fo time. A bit of explanation on how Rose survived the Time Vortex but it caused The Doctor to regenerate would be nice. All it needed was a throwaway line during the Regeneration sequence.

Minor tweaks, anyway. Still totally re-watchable.

Review - Bad Wolf

Stuff starts getting REAL as the season 1 season arc bears delicious Dalek-fruit in Bad Wolf.

Season 1, Episode 12 - Bad Wolf

Back we go to Platform 5, a century after The Doctor made his gross assumption that everything would go back to normal, only to find that it didn't. That worked well, didn't it Doctor? If only you'd asked where that Jagrafess had come from. Seriously though, I love to see The Doctor as fallible.

This time around the concept of televisual thought control is taken to the next logical step, with reality TV being the focus. As an added bonus of revisiting this episode, I also got to revisit some of the crappiest TV programming of the new millennium.

It really is a wonder this stuff didn't last.

The droids are all delightful representations of their real life inspirations, and the games work well as ways to destroy people. All except the What Not To Wear show, which really forced a way to kill the contestant. Those segments were the most entertaining though. John Barrowman plays it so well, clearly enjoying a chance to really ham it up as Jack. And did I see him grope one of the droids at one point?

Yes. Yes I did.

This episode has also given us our first Deadlock Seal to stop any Deus Ex Screwdriver. We got our first Torchwood reference too, starting that neat tradition of teasing the next season arc.

We get a bit of what I'm going to call Companion Tease, where Lynda shows an interest in traveling with The Doctor, and The Doctor shows an interest in letting her. Or is that just an interest in her. I couldn't really tell from this if there was supposed to be a romantic spark here or just an interest in travelling. Either way, this helps support Rose's "death" by making it feel like they're introducing a replacement.

She certainly seems the type.

The Controller was nice and creepy, and she was offered up as a solid Red Herring villain. Her death gave a good hint at who the Big Bad really was. We got a bit of monster vision when Rose woke up too, which again gave a strong hint. The revelation the enemy are Daleks plays out nicely, and the threat level of one Dalek established in the episode Dalek makes us understand this threat is near unbelievable.

It was interesting that The Doctor defied the Daleks when that were threatening Rose's life. I'm not sure he could have known they wouldn't just exterminate her. He did end it well though, and the closing shot of the interior of the Dalek ship was just ace, and left me hanging for The Parting of the Ways.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Well, my only real bugbear with this episode was the reality shows the crew ended up in at the start. Of all of them, I think Big Brother is the only one left on the air, so it hasn't aged well. The main issue was that the What Not To Wear show didn't have a realistic way of destroying people. This is a tough one, because those sequences were so entertaining, but I think they needed to either figure out another way to get the disintegration ray into that show, or put Jack in a different show altogether. Perhaps some version of The Bachelorette would have allowed Jack to give us some awesome Jack moments but still retain the element of elimination common to the other two shows.

Bring on part two!

Review - Hide

Interesting and tense but with a strong season arc connection, Hide is about as bad as an episode if Doctor Who should get.

Season 7, Episode 9 - Hide

The pacing of this episode was solid. We start off slow with a steady escalation. Not much of it seems rushed, and The Doctor does seem to have to work for a solution. Happily the Sonic Screwdriver sees very little use, although when it is used it is as a scanner of some sort, which is a pet peeve. Either way, the Screwdriver didn't play a major role in saving the day, which is good.

I liked the way the episode was shot, with the monster reveal being very subtle. Even at the end we never saw the whole of the Crooked Man, nor learn what it actually is. It was a good horror episode, but is that what we want from Doctor Who? Ordinarily I'm not fond of the move towards more horror episodes, but in this case I'm not that fussed. It worked well because it was more about the tension than the monster.

That said, it wasn't entirely consistent with regards to how the pocket dimension worked. We are seeing supposedly unchanging images of Hila Tukurian in the pocket dimension, why does she appear to move in the opening scene? Why is she not always in the same geographic place? Why, when The Doctor goes to rescue her, is the timeline consistent in both dimensions? It shouldn't have been too hard to flesh that out.

There were some hints at a bit of Hunka hunka burning Doc from Clara, but not a lot. The love content of the episode was high, but most of it was from Emma and Professor Palmer. I was also glad to see The Doctor being more oblivious to others' feelings again. He seemed almost heartless towards Clara's angst about time travel, and his intrusion into a private moment at the end was classic Doctor behaviour.

My major issue here is the footprint of the season arc. We discover The Doctor traveled there specifically to find Emma to ask her about Clara. Pushing us fully into The Companion Show territory, we had more of the TARDIS not liking Clara, which is most likely connected to her tendency to resurrect, much like Captain Jack before her.

This leads me to another minor issue. When Captain Jack clung to the outside of the TARDIS during flight in the episode Utopia, it killed him. Yet here we are with The Doctor surviving the same thing unscathed. Twice. I've had this discussion with other fans who pointed out that the TARDIS may not have had to enter the Time Vortex to get to the pocket dimension, making the trip less dangerous for The Doctor and the Crooked Man. Either way, it could have been handled better.

All up, I was entertained and would likely watch it again, but it's far from a favourite.

6/10

Can we fix it?

My issues are pretty small with this episode, so the fix should be fairly simple. I'm not sure how important all this foreshadowing for Clara and the season arc is, and so I can't really make a call as to what to cut and what to keep, but I do feel we could have shaved some of it out. Keeping The Doctor's chat with Emma at the end would probably be enough, with Clara's issues with the TARDIS fitting reasonably well into the story. I'd have also dropped Clara's first mention of the TARDIS not liking her, as we've heard that before and it becomes quite clear once they have their altercation later.

The issue with The Doctor travelling on the TARDIS could be easily clarified by either having the TARDIS materialise around The Doctor, or simply having him leap through the open doors. If he absolutely had to cling to the outside, perhaps a short explanation as to why he's okay would be nice, even if it's dismissive.

Equally, some more explanation around the timelines when The Doctor is travelling through the portal would be nice. It would be easy enough to slip in a line about how the timeflows in both dimensions synchronise when the psychic connection is made. This would explain both how Hila appeared to be moving in the images at the start, and how The Doctor could exact his rescue mission. Of course it doesn't explain what happened in the minutes when the connection was broken, so it could be a neat trick to have things freeze for The Doctor whilst the connection is broken.

So instead of confusing chronology and Emma being cajoled and guilted into reopening the portal, we get a nice tension builder where the Crooked Man is about to pounce on The Doctor just as the connection breaks. With Emma out of action, Clara has her run-in with the TARDIS and zooms in to the rescue an instant after the connection broke, materialising around The Doctor with the Crooked man comically ploughing into the side of the TARDIS.

The ending could then play out the same way, but perhaps with The Doctor bringing the Crooked Man back through the portal, rather than the TARDIS, so as to avoid needlessly burning up her energy source.

What do you think? Did I miss anything?

Hunka hunka burning Doc

"Why is it," I ask myself with shocking regularity, "that nearly every woman who comes in contact with The Doctor wants to cut herself off a piece of that?"

My earliest memories of The Doctor are of him being a nearly asexual being. Yes, The Doctor has, at some point in the past been married and had children (and Grandchildren), but for whatever reason he seemed to have moved on from all that. On the occasions when romantic entanglements happened around him, he treated them as annoyances or curiosities. When he recognised them at all

He was too intelligent for sex.

Nowadays he still seems a little awkward on most occasions when he gets female attention, but he is also quite frequently seen putting it about. There have been implications of sex between The Doctor and Madame de Pompadour, Queen Elizabeth I, and River Song at least. I'm likely forgetting some other subtle references too.

Funny? Sure. Necessary? Probably not

And that's just the people he actually reciprocates with. There's a whole host of ladies who lined up unsuccessfully to have a crack at him too.

The funny thing is, the ladies didn't start throwing themselves at The Doctor until he regenerated from Christopher Eccleston into the slightly more pleasing form of David Tennant. Even Rose doesn't really show any full-blown romantic feelings until after this point. Things have only gotten worse with Matt Smith, and it's kind of dumbing the show down.

He's becoming too sexy for intelligence.

I do wonder if the appointment of increasingly youthful actors in the role of The Doctor is the cause or an effect of this. By which I mean, did they want to add sexual tension and got a Doctor they thought could realistically pull it off, or did the better looking Doctor give them the confidence (or audience demand) to include the sexual tension?

I've previously linked to an article which quoted Steven Moffat on why the Companions are all attractive young girls:

I think the function of a companion is pretty simple. I don’t think that’s very difficult. It’s just a question of who credibly is going to agree to go in the TARDIS? Who’s going to do it? Is it going to be a mother of 15 children? No. Is it going to be someone in their 60s? No. Is there going to be a particular age range? I mean … who’s going to have a crush on the Doctor? You know, come on! It’s more than a format. It’s evolved from good, dramatic reasons.

And this makes sense to a degree, but this is one of those statements that confuses correlation with causation. Yes, hot young girls who have a crush on The Doctor have a reason for running off with him, but that doesn't mean only hot young girls who have a crush on The Doctor have a reason for running off with him. The statement also neatly ignores Donna Noble.

Can we fix it?

Of course we can; very easily. Stop writing women that want The Doctor, at least not all the time. And if you do, make sure it's for a reason. Was there a reason for Nefertiti to be all over The Doctor? Not that I could see.

And give us Companions that have more motivation for traveling with The Doctor than "He's a bit of alright." There is a bunch of other logical reasons a person may want to go off adventuring, and they're almost all more interesting.

Things only got back on track with Amy Pond after The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang where Amy and Rory's relationship solidified, and the relationship between Companion and Doctor worked much better with the sexual tension removed.

Sadly, we couldn't go the length of a whole Christmas Special without Clara jumping on The Doctor for a big ol' smoocharoo. I literally faceplamed at that point. The episode was in no way richer for it's inclusion, and it felt very, very forced.

The only female Companion to not have the hots for him was Donna Noble. Having seen the Catherine Tate Show before she appeared in The Runaway Bride, my opinion was already soiled of how she'd be as a Companion (I wasn't a fan). I didn't really like The Runaway Bride much and I was dreading her inclusion as a full-time Companion, but it turns out she was a perfect foil for The Doctor, and she is actually my favourite of the new Companions. And with no sexual tension too.

I would kill for that again.

The Companion Show, featuring The Doctor

A greater man than I introduced me to this phrase, and it neatly encapsulated an issue I'd been feeling for a while. This is something that really started with Amy Pond, but for a couple of seasons now the clear focus of Doctor Who has shifted away from the titular character and onto the companion. Why exactly?

Show runner Steven Moffat has made it clear how he feels about this, saying:

Doctor Who is more the story, in a way, about the companion. It’s her take on The Doctor, it’s her adventure she goes on with the Doctor. It’s a story that you tell because the companion, the other character, changes more than the Doctor ever does.

And this does sort of make sense in a way. However surely it's possible to show us the Companion change as a person without making the whole show about them. It is their experiences with The Doctor that cause this change, and it is those experiences that should be the focus.

Unfortunately what we are seeing is the Companion become the driving force behind whole plotlines. They are spending so much time showing the development of the Companions that the adventures in time and space are becoming secondary. How can adventures in time and space be the secondary focus of a show about a man with a spaceship capable of time travel?

Here in Australia, we got the Season 6 pre-title rider of Amy Pond introducing the show:

And now on ABC1, The Amy Pond Show

It's my understanding that this was there mostly for the burgeoning US audience to sort of catch them up. Unfortunately it also helped to skew the focus further away from The Doctor. It was the opening for The Amy Pond Show.

Now this has been taken a step further, with the entire focus of the second half of Season 7 being on who Clara Oswald is. There's still time for them to tone it back, but that will be difficult without The Doctor completely ignoring the entire reason Clara has interested him in the first place. It has quite literally become The Clara Oswald Show, featuring The Doctor.

Can we fix it?

Companions are a funny thing, and can be quite divisive amongst fans. Of course I love Amy Pond, but that's more because Karen Gillan is smoking hot and I am in no way ashamed of admitting that. It's clear Moffat wants to ensure the companion remains a hot, young female, and that's fan-service as much as anything else, despite how he may justify it. Regardless of how young, hot and female they are, they don't need to be the driving force behind the show.

Moffat has said:

I think when you start with a character who’s going to be a companion, who’s going to be on the TARDIS, you can’t think of the word ‘companion.’ You can’t think that they know that they’re a supporting character on a TV show.

So he clearly understands that the character are supposed to be supporting The Doctor, but at the same time wants to make them more than that. This is the mistake. I'm not saying the Companions have to be one-dimensional arm-candy for The Doctor who exist solely to get into trouble and be saved by him. Hell, if you don't get so caught up on them having to be hot young girls with a crush on The Doctor they have a better chance of adding value and, you know, supporting him.

Ideally we should not really notice the development of the Companion unless they get thrust to the fore for whatever reason. Perhaps we should be left wondering why they agreed to go travelling with The Doctor for their whole tenure. We should end up re-watching the first episode with a Companion and only then realise, "Wow, they've changed a lot."

So in short, Companions should be introduced in the context of their first story, given a simple reason for joining The Doctor (please not just that they want him), and spend their time with him gradually changing from a naive earthbound dreamer into a tough and seasoned time traveler. In stories they should be there to assist The Doctor with whatever skills they have, and in season arcs they should be more or less the same thing, but with the option of being more instrumental if dramatically appropriate.

And they need to stop kissing The Doctor.

Seriously.